The Afghan Threat Finance Cell was a multi-agency intelligence organization in Afghanistan. [1] [2] [3] The organization was created in 2008. The United States' Drug Enforcement Administration was the lead agency in the organization. The co-deputy agencies were the United States Treasury and the United States Department of Defense. Other participating agencies included the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Department of Homeland Security, and the United States Internal Revenue Service.
The Afghan Threat Finance Cell was set up at the initiative of General David Petraeus, when he was promoted to command of Central Command, based on the experience of the earlier Iraqi Threat Finance Cell that had reported to him when he was in command in Iraq. [4] [5]
In February 2011, Dexter Filkins, writing in The New Yorker , reported: [3]
The Threat Finance Cell also has almost single-handedly demonstrated the degree to which the American-led war in Afghanistan is compromised by connections among the Taliban, drug traffickers, and Afghan officials. [3]
The organization was instrumental in exposing corruption in the Kabul Bank, which came close to collapse in 2010. [6]
In February 2012 the Afghan Threat Finance Cell was awarded the Department of Defense's Joint Meritorious Unit Award. [1]
Tracking both illicit and legitimate financial transactions led to 27 approved targets to be named on the "Joint Prioritized Effects List". [1] The Joint Prioritized Effects List is colloquially called the "kill or capture list". Once an individual is named on this list, special forces are authorized to covertly target and raid that individual's home or workplace.
Ryan Clark Crocker is a retired American diplomat who served as a career ambassador within the United States Foreign Service. A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he served as United States ambassador to Afghanistan (2011–2012), Iraq (2007–2009), Pakistan (2004–2007), Syria (1998–2001), Kuwait (1994–1997), and Lebanon (1990–1993). In January 2010, he became dean of Texas A&M University's George Bush School of Government and Public Service.
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The United States Department of Defense is an executive branch department of the federal government of the United States charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the U.S. government directly related to national security and the United States Armed Forces. As of June 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense is the largest employer in the world, with over 1.34 million active-duty service members, including soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen, and guardians. The Department of Defense also maintains over 778,000 National Guard and reservists, and over 747,000 civilians bringing the total to over 2.87 million employees. Headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., the Department of Defense's stated mission is to provide "the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security".
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Edward Zellem is a retired U.S. Navy captain and the 12-time award-winning author of 5 books. He is known for his work inside Afghanistan's Presidential Palace and for authoring three bilingual collections of Afghan Proverbs: Zarbul Masalha: 151 Afghan Dari Proverbs, a book for children entitled Afghan Proverbs Illustrated, and a companion book of Pashto proverbs entitled Mataluna: 151 Afghan Pashto Proverbs. Zellem wrote the books to "show how Afghan proverbs demonstrate our common humanity and the humanity of Afghans, and to share the proverbs' lyricism, richness and deep meanings with the rest of the world". He is a member of the International Association of Paremiology (AIP-IAP), which is based in Tavira, Portugal. It is a nonprofit cultural institution dedicated to the international scientific study of proverbs, and is the only association of its type in the world. He also is an active professional scuba diving instructor with the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI), and holds the PADI rating of Master Scuba Diver Trainer (MSDT).
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The United States Armed Forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on 30 August 2021, marking the end of the 2001–2021 war. In February 2020, the Trump administration and the Taliban signed the United States–Taliban deal in Doha, Qatar, which stipulated fighting restrictions for both the US and the Taliban, and in return for the Taliban's counter-terrorism commitments, provided for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan by 1 May 2021. Following the deal, the US dramatically reduced the number of air attacks on the Taliban at the detriment of the ANSF fighting the Taliban insurgency. The Biden administration's final decision in April 2021 was to begin the withdrawal on 1 May 2021, but the final pull-out of all US troops was delayed until September 2021, triggering the start of the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). This collapse led to the Taliban takeover of Kabul on 15 August 2021.
The ATFC began operations in mid-2009 and is a multi-agency organization led by DEA with the Treasury Department and Department of Defense as co-deputies. Additional personnel staff ATFC from the Department of Defense's CENTCOM, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Internal Revenue Service. In the past, the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police also were members. The ATFC's purpose is to attack insurgence funding and financing networks by providing threat finance expertise and actionable intelligence to U.S. civilian and military leaders.
The US government has now created a special investigative unit called the Afghan Threat Finance Cell that gathers financial information about the Taliban. The cell has about two-dozen members drawn from the Drug Enforcement Administration, US Central Command, the Treasury Department and the CIA. The FBI is expected to join soon.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)The investigation into Kabul Bank was run by a remarkable but little-known group of Americans working at the Embassy called the Afghan Threat Finance Cell. Their findings are considered so sensitive that almost no one—generals, diplomats, the investigators themselves—is willing to talk about them publicly.
Gen. Petraeus at this time had moved from commander in Iraq to commander of CENTCOM writ large and saw as one of his priorities the establishment of a threat finance cell in Afghanistan akin to the ITFC. When he was asked at a House of Representatives hearing in April of 2009 to comment on how forces in Afghanistan were combating threat finance networks, he responded that the key would be getting the Afghan Threat Finance Cell set up because of the ITFC's success in Iraq.
The Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell (ATFC) was established in FY 2009 on the model of the successful Iraq Threat Finance Cell as a joint Treasury, State and Defense Department initiative.
